(AP) — A technology issue prompted United Airlines to ground planes at major U.S. airports Wednesday and more than 1,000 flights were delayed.
The impacted system, called Unimatic, houses flight information that is fed to other systems including those that calculate weight and balance and track flight times, according to United. It’s not clear what caused the problem, which was resolved late Wednesday, though some service disruptions continued into Thursday.
AN ALERT ON the Federal Aviation Administration website said all United flights destined for Chicago were halted at their departing airports. Flights to United hubs at Denver, Newark, Houston and San Francisco airports also were affected.
“Safety is our top priority, and we’ll work with our customers to get them to their destinations,” an emailed statement from the Chicago based-airline said.
THE SYSTEM outage, as the company described it, lasted several hours, the statement said. It wasn’t related to recent concerns about airline industry cybersecurity.
About 35% of all the airline’s flights were delayed and another 6% were canceled Wednesday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.
United Airlines apologized on social media and said in some cases it would pay for hotel and other expenses incurred by travelers because of the delays.
